Rape and Sexual Abuse Against Women in the Holocaust — Deprived Credibility and Refused Recognition as a Form of Harm

Abstract

Sexual violence research is often not limited to the direct perpetration of violence, but also focusses on the (inter-)personal processing of the violence experienced. This article presents the various ways in which female survivors of sexual violence in German concentration camps were denied recognition of their suffering, both by the representatives of the Nazi regime in the camps, as well as by their fellow prisoners and finally by the German authorities after the war. In order to understand these complex forms of victimisation, I examine various reasons why women’s experiences were often misrepresented and not taken seriously, thereby silencing the victims and making them almost invisible (deprivation of credibility). Against this background, I show why the deprivation of credibility, long after the physical assaults, should be understood as a persistent form of harm.